Board of Trustees

The Faraday Institution’s trustees bring multifaceted perspectives and experiences from academia, industry, and public service to the role of advising the Faraday Institution. Board members serve as ambassadors and advisers in support of the Faraday Institution’s aims.

Peter B. Littlewood, Chair

Peter B. Littlewood is Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He served as the 13th Director of the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, after having served as the associate laboratory director of its Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate. He spent the previous 14 years at the University of Cambridge, where he last served as the head of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Department of Physics. Littlewood is internationally recognized for his research in a number of areas, including superconductivity, semiconductor optics, and magnetic materials. Littlewood holds a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences (physics) and a doctorate in physics, both from the University of Cambridge. More…

Stephen Heidari-Robinson, Vice-Chair

Stephen Heidari-Robinson is co-founder and managing director of Quartz Associates. He served as former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s energy and environment adviser and was one of the architects of the UK’s generation strategy and decarbonisation plan. Heidari-Robinson spent nine years as a leader in McKinsey and Company’s energy practice and was a vice president of Schlumberger. Heidari-Robinson read history at the University of Oxford, holds an MA in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute, London University, and studied Farsi at the School of Oriental and African Studies. More…

Stefan Berger

Stefan Berger joined Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) as Director, Electrification, in October 2017. He plays a vital role in JLR’s electrification journey, leading and coordinating both the electrification of the product portfolio and related activities like charging infrastructure development and the creation of new business models around electrification. Stefan holds a PhD in Information Systems from the University of Regensburg, Germany, and a Diploma in Business Administration of the University of Passau, Germany. More…

Jeff Chamberlain

Jeff Chamberlain is CEO of Volta Energy Technologies, a company that identifies and invests in battery and energy storage technology after performing deep diligence with the support of unparalleled global research institutions. In service both to its strategic corporate investors and to entrepreneurs, Volta identifies and invests in the most promising energy-storage innovations. Chamberlain holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS in Chemistry from Wake Forest University. More…

Johney Green

Dr Johney Green Jr. serves as the Associate Laboratory Director for the Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences directorate at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Green oversees early-stage and applied research and development in NREL’s advanced manufacturing, buildings efficiency, concentrating solar power, geothermal energy, sustainable transportation, water power, and wind energy programs. Green holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Memphis and a master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. More…

Julie Maxton

Dr Julie Maxton CBE is the Executive Director of the Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post. Before taking up her position at the Royal Society in 2011 Maxton was Registrar at the University of Oxford, the first woman in 550 years in the role. Maxton combined a career as a practising lawyer with that of an academic, holding a number of senior academic positions, including those of Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. More…

Alan E. Nelson

Alan E. Nelson is the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Executive of New Markets for Johnson Matthey plc. Nelson is responsible for leading the company’s innovation portfolio, and new business development in emerging markets including lithium ion batteries. Prior to joining Johnson Matthey, Nelson led R&D for several market facing businesses at The Dow Chemical Company, and prior to Dow was an Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at University of Alberta. He received his doctorate in chemical engineering from Michigan Technological University and his bachelor’s degree from University of Minnesota Duluth. More…

Jorge Pikunic

Jorge Pikunic is Managing Director of Centrica’s global Distributed Energy & Power business, established to deliver distributed energy solutions for large energy users as part of a more flexible energy landscape. Born in Venezuela, Pikunic is an engineer and holds a MSc and PhD in Chemical Engineering. He was a research fellow at the University of Oxford before joining McKinsey & Company, where he advised a number of institutions in energy and other sectors. More…

Mark Spearing

Professor Mark Spearing is the Vice-President, Research and Enterprise at the University of Southampton. Previously he was the Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) and Head of the School of Engineering Sciences, having been appointed as the Professor of Engineering Materials in 2004. He was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1994-2004. His personal research focuses on structural and functional materials. He holds a BA and PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. More…

Pam Thomas

Professor Pam A. Thomas FInst P, CPhys, is currently the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Warwick with responsibility for academic leadership of the research portfolio. In her personal research, she leads the Ferroelectric Crystallography group in the Department of Physics. She was educated at the University of Oxford, where she took a BA (Hons) in Physics and a DPhil on the subject of Optical Activity in Crystals in the Crystallography Group of the Clarendon Laboratory. More…

Kristina Edström

Professor Edström leads the Ångström Advanced Battery Centre (ÅABC) and she is a professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Uppsala University, Sweden. The main research interests are lithium-ion batteries for all applications including electric vehicles, 3D microbatteries but beyond lithium batteries (sodium-ion, organic batteries, lithium-sulfur, lithium/sodium-oxygen batteries and solid state batteries). She also develops photon science and neutron scattering in operando methods for studying dynamic processes in materials and batteries, in addition to having a great interest in teaching and guiding young researchers. She is a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences. More…

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Rt Hon Sir Oliver Letwin, MP, Senior Advisor

Sir Oliver has been the Member of Parliament for West Dorset since 1997. From 2010, he was the Minister for Government Policy in David Cameron’s coalition government and coordinated the push to make the UK a world leader in electric vehicles. He continued to serve as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Cabinet Minister in overall charge of the Cabinet Office until July 2016. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and London Business School. In a varied career, Sir Oliver has been a research fellow at Cambridge University, a civil servant, and a bank director. He lives in West Dorset and London. More…